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Monday, 8 June 2015

The 7 Habits of Highly Annoying Wine People!

From sommeliers who insist
on calling their wine list ‘curated’ to hosts who serve red wine that’s
too warm, the annoyances that can drive WSJ wine columnist Lettie Teague
not to drink

WINE IS A BEVERAGE meant to bring pleasure, perhaps
even joy. And yet, for me, some aspects of wine can make it much less
enjoyable. Some of these irritations are small, some are much
bigger—from waiters who unceremoniously dump the contents of a bottle
into customers’ glasses to wine shops that sell every bottle by means of
a numerical score. Here are my top seven wine-related pet peeves.
Perhaps you have one or two of your own?

1. Wine-dumping waiters

I’m not the kind of person who lingers long over a meal. I once
managed to eat a five-course dinner in a Michelin-starred restaurant in
less than two hours. (And that was in France!) But I want to set my own
pace: I don’t like to be rushed along by the staff, and I especially
dislike it when a waiter takes hold of my bottle and dumps the contents
into my glass without asking whether I’d like more—or not.

The
bottle is mine; I’ve ordered it and I will be paying for it soon (though
clearly not soon enough for some waiters), so I should be able to
control how much or how little goes into my glass or the glass of my
guest. I hate a glass that’s filled to the top. It’s impossible to swirl
the glass without slopping liquid over the rim or to get an aromatic
impression when there’s no space for your nose inside the glass.

Most
of all, I know that dumping wine into glasses is calculated to get me
to order another bottle—fast. This may work sometimes, but I think overt
manipulation of a guest rarely ends well. When I encounter this kind of
aggressive upsell (that’s what it is) I might not order a second
bottle, and drink water instead.

2. ‘Curated’ wine lists

When
did a sommelier become the restaurant equivalent of a museum director
or an art-gallery owner? I’m talking about the fact that just about
every sommelier today talks in terms of curating a list, seemingly unsatisfied with the perception that all they do is buy and sell wine.

The
word isn’t even particularly accurate. For example, I’ve yet to meet a
sommelier who has mounted a wine exhibition. Secondly, the word is so
puffy and self-important, it undoes the notion of wine as a democratic
drink, as well as sommeliers as an approachable professional group.

A
wine list, after all, isn’t a gallery catalog. It is a sales document
and hopefully a profit center for the restaurant. And sommeliers who
believe otherwise aren’t doing their job.

3. Pseudo-collectors

Some
people are real wine collectors, men and women (mostly men) who are
seized by a passion to own and drink particular wines. They share their
favorites with friends and add new vintages to their cellars over time.
Perhaps they collect first-growth Bordeaux, Napa Cabernet, Brunello or
Oregon Pinot Noir, but whatever the region or the wine, they will strive
to know much about that particular place and its producers, and perhaps
even pay them a visit.

And then there are the buyers who aren’t really collectors at all
but men and women who are chasing after wines with famous names or
impressively high scores. These pseudo-collectors join every mailing
list of every famous producer they can and spend more time talking about
how a bottle has increased in value since they bought it than how much
they enjoyed the wine with friends. They don’t want to take the time to
understand a wine or region in depth but instead flit from one place or
name to the next, seeking the wines that others want too. These kinds of
collectors are the wine-world equivalent of serial daters. They like
the thrill of the chase but not the commitment.

4. Wines served at the wrong temperature

The
temperature of a wine is incredibly important and incredibly easy to
overlook. When white wines are served too cold and red wines are served
too warm, attractive attributes are suppressed and unattractive
attributes are exaggerated.

Aromas and fruit are hard to find in
a very cold wine (acidity is about all that’s detectable), while the
alcohol is often exaggerated and the fruit dulled in a wine that’s too
warm. White wines should be served chilled, red wines should be cool.

I’ve
had wines that are too warm or too cold in countless restaurants and
private homes and found that the latter is more readily addressed (you
just wait for the wine to warm up), not to mention better understood.
When I’ve announced, “This wine is too cold,” people grasp the problem,
but if I ask for ice cubes to swirl in a glass of too-warm red, I often
get suspicious and/or incredulous looks from people who have never
witnessed this technique. You remove the cubes after some four or five
seconds; it’s a remarkably fast way to bring the temperature down.

In fact, this just happened recently. A man stopped me, ice cube in hand, at a party and said, “You do know
that wine is red?” He asked his clearly rhetorical question in a
horrified tone. Yes, indeed I did, I assured him. He kept his distance
the rest of the night, and kept right on drinking his nice, warm glass
of red wine.

5. Wine shops that rely on scores

In a
wine shop about 20 minutes from my house, every wine on the shelf or in a
box boasts a numerical score. Sometimes the numbers are awarded by wine
critics at wine magazines, but just as often they’re rated by the
(faceless) store management. “Manager’s pick: 90 points,” the sign reads
in very large type.

But I don’t know the manager or his taste in
wine, so I’m loath to take a chance on a wine based on his numerical
score. Is he giving it a big number just to make a sale? Maybe if the
manager and I had a conversation I might be more inclined to trust his
generous numerical assessment.

Actually, I don’t want to read
numbers from anyone when I go wine shopping. I want to have a
conversation with the staff about how a wine tastes and smells to find
out if their palate aligns with mine, and then I’ll try a
recommendation—based on their words, not their numbers.

6. Tasting-room staff who tell you what you’re about to taste

A
winery tasting room can be a great place to learn about wine and the
style of a specific winemaker or winery, but sometimes the staff gets
carried away by what they perceive to be their job. I can’t count the
number of times I’ve heard a tasting-room worker describe, in minute
detail, exactly what a wine drinker should expect to find in his or her
glass. And this is all before said taster has had a chance to swallow a
drop. “You’ll find notes of peaches, pears, plums and cinnamon toast,”
the tasting-room associate will explain to the customer, who will
invariably declare that he or she also finds those very same notes. Or
perhaps the taster will be hopelessly lost and conclude that wine
tasting is a skill that he or she lacks.

It’s much better for the
winery staff to talk less about subjective sensations and more about
objective facts, such as whether the wine is tannic or soft, or high in
alcohol or not. This information helps educate tasters, and is a lot
more useful than a bunch of names from a fruit basket.

7. Wine educators

Are
we now at the point where there are as many wine educators as there are
wine drinkers in need of an education? I’m convinced we are close to
parity—at least judging by the number of self-declared wine educators
I’ve met. They’re often hyphenated professionals: wine
salesperson-educators, sommelier-educators or wine writer-educators
(never mind that I thought wine writers were by definition educating
their readers).

A wine educator isn’t licensed by any particular
governing body. Sometimes wine educators are “certified,” although the
source of the certification isn’t necessarily specified on their
business cards. (A credential can even be acquired via an online
course.) These educators—many of whom hold “educational tastings” for
large sums of money for corporate clients—seem like the wine-world
equivalent of a life coach.

As far as I’m concerned, the most
lasting and certainly most enjoyable sort of wine education is obtained
by drinking widely and often, in the company of others. Reading wine
books—and maybe even wine columns—and traveling to wine regions help,
too. Basically, when it comes to wine education, I’m a big believer in a
self-taught wine drinker.